Alex and I are treated differently.
That’s not a complaint, and it isn’t something either of us spends much time dwelling on, (I’m not sure he’s even noticed) but it’s simply true.
We’re both gay men. We’re now married to each other. We attend many of the same events, walk into the same restaurants, sit at the same bars, and interact with a lot of the same people. Yet we move through the world differently because people see us differently.
Most people figure out I’m gay pretty quickly, but I can blend in if I have to. Years of growing up evangelical taught me how to read a room, adjust my presentation and tone things down when needed (code switch). Thankfully, it doesn’t happen all that often, but I was reminded of it a couple weeks ago at a dive bar in Cary.
Stephen Aber
Alex doesn’t do that, nor should he need to. He’s smaller than I am, has several earrings, carries himself differently and generally makes no effort whatsoever to disguise who he is. Within moments of seeing him, most people know.
One of the things I love most about him is how comfortable he is in himself — everywhere. The guy doesn’t do self-conscious. At 23 years old, he has a level of self-assurance and confidence that took me more than 35 years to develop. He doesn’t apologize for who he is or edit himself depending on the audience. He doesn’t spend time wondering whether he’s making other people uncomfortable. I do.
Now, part of this is my extreme self-awareness, a trait I’m very glad I have (we all need to self-edit now and then), but when you pair that with anxiety and internalized homophobia, it’s less positive.
In certain environments, especially places dominated by a traditional version of masculinity, I sometimes find myself becoming protective. Not because I’m worried about what will happen to me, but because I’m worried about how people will respond to us gays. That night in Cary, as a jazz band improvised (really well) and the Hurricanes (that’s hockey!) played on the screen (when the Wi-Fi was working), Alex ordered drinks and I innately thought “Dude, can you be a little less gay?!” Not because I want him to or because there’s anything wrong with who we are — just because I know how people are.
This plays into a notion I’ve had for years. I really think much of what we call homophobia isn’t actually about the gays. It’s about women. It’s about femininity. It’s about how we as a society assign value to genders.
“One of the quickest ways to discover how much a culture values women is to watch how it treats effeminate men.”
One of the quickest ways to discover how much a culture values women is to watch how it treats effeminate men.
If people genuinely objected to homosexuality itself, all gay people would receive roughly the same reaction. Take it from a gay man who has spent his entire life in the South: They don’t.
Sorting
Society always has sorted gay people into categories. Masculine gay men are tolerated in ways feminine gay men aren’t. If a gay man talks the right way, dresses the right way, enjoys the right hobbies and performs masculinity convincingly enough, many people are willing to overlook the fact that he’s gay altogether. They may not approve, but they can comfortably coexist with him because everything else about him remains familiar.
Lesbians reveal the same pattern from a different angle. Society doesn’t react to all lesbians equally either. Masculine lesbians are seen as tough, independent, practical and capable. Meanwhile, feminine lesbians encounter a different response shaped less by hostility and more by fetishization. Straight men who never would consider dating a woman with another woman in her dating history somehow have no problem consuming lesbian pornography.
In both cases, the reaction isn’t really about sexual orientation. It’s about how closely someone aligns with expectations around masculinity and femininity.
For the record, it’s not just heterosexual culture. There’s an entire sect of gay culture that reinforces this; the “masc for masc” community has, hilariously, come out of the closet in a big way during the Trump years, as toxic masculinity has cried like a whiny little brat that men are the real victims in the world. Plenty of gay men are as misogynistic as their straight bro counterparts.
“Plenty of gay men are as misogynistic as their straight bro counterparts.”
When a man stops performing masculinity altogether, things shift, and not just for gay men, which reinforces my point. What’s the typical reaction to stay-at-home dads? Men whose wives make more money than they do? Men who like to cook? Men who try to watch the game but just really don’t enjoy the sportsball? It’s always the same: “Ugh, that’s gay.”
Suddenly people who claim their objection is about sexuality become intensely interested in mannerisms, speech patterns, clothing, interests and personality.
They insist the issue is homosexuality but spend all their energy reacting to femininity. Once you notice this pattern, you see it everywhere.
You see it in the questions people ask. Heterosexual people are endlessly fascinated by gay sex. They want to know who’s the top, who’s the bottom. Who’s the man? Who’s the woman? I’ve been asked some version of these questions more times than I can count, and I know for a fact they aren’t about sex. They’re trying to understand hierarchy.
Hierarchy
After all, every relationship requires a masculine role and a feminine role, right? Someone has to lead and someone has to follow. Someone has to be in the dominant position and someone has to be subordinate. When they encounter a same-sex couple, they search for a framework they recognize.
They aren’t asking about the mechanics of a relationship; they’re trying to determine where each person belongs within a social order they’ve spent their entire lives normalizing. The entire conversation only makes sense if we start from the assumption that occupying the feminine role is somehow lesser, and that’s where misogyny enters the picture.
Most people think misogyny means actively hating women, and sometimes it does. More often it means believing, consciously or unconsciously, things associated with women possess less value than things associated with men.
“Misogyny means believing, consciously or unconsciously, things associated with women possess less value than things associated with men.”
That’s why women who adopt traditionally masculine characteristics often are the ones who succeed professionally. We’ve built workplaces that reward traits associated with “masculinity”” assertiveness, competitiveness, decisiveness, ambition, confidence. Yet even then, women are punished for exhibiting the very behaviors that helped them advance.
- The decisive male executive is a strong leader. The decisive female executive is difficult.
- The ambitious man is driven. The ambitious woman is selfish.
- The direct man is confident. The direct woman is aggressive.
Women are frequently expected to succeed according to masculine standards while simultaneously being criticized for abandoning feminine ones. And men who adopt traditionally feminine characteristics? Well, they’re just mocked, dismissed, questioned and treated as weaker.
The asymmetry reveals everything. Why? Because our culture still blatantly treats masculinity as the higher status category.
We teach boys this almost from birth. We don’t insult them by comparing them to athletes, soldiers, mechanics or businessmen. We insult them by comparing them to girls. Throw like a girl. Crying is for girls. Stop acting like a girl. The message is clear long before most children are old enough to understand it consciously.
Femininity is something to avoid; masculinity is something to achieve. This behavior doesn’t disappear when people grow up, it just becomes more sophisticated.
What many people find unsettling about feminine gay men isn’t that they love men. It’s that they refuse to participate in the hierarchy. Their existence challenges the assumption that masculinity is inherently superior to femininity. A feminine gay man forces people to confront a possibility they’d rather avoid: What if there’s nothing wrong with being a woman in the first place? What if strength and femininity aren’t opposites? What if being associated with women isn’t an insult?
And Pride month? A whole month of celebrating the fact that it’s OK for a man to act more like a woman? Hoooo boy, that really sets ‘em off!
The behavior threatens a system that depends on women occupying a lower rung of the ladder. If femininity isn’t lesser, then the hierarchy starts to collapse. Gay men become targets when they challenge those rules too openly.
Being yourself
Which brings me back to Alex.
He’s not trying to make a statement. He’s not interested in challenging social norms. He’s certainly not spending his time thinking about gender theory. He’s just living his life, comfortable with who he is, comfortable with how he presents himself, comfortable taking up space without asking permission.
This was a constant rub in my previous relationships. I was the one who was asked to tone it down. Wear fewer rhinestones, ditch the boots and necklaces. Try a little makeup? They never would’ve allowed it. Alex loves it.
The more closely someone conforms to traditional gender expectations, the more comfortable society becomes, and the further they drift from those expectations, the more hostility they encounter. That’s true for gay people, straight people, men and women alike.
We call that hostility a lot of things. Sometimes it’s sexism. Sometimes it’s homophobia. Sometimes it’s just “the way things are.”
But underneath all of them sits the same assumption: Masculinity is valuable, femininity is not. Until we deal with that, we’re not really dealing with any of the rest of it.
Stephen Aber serves as organist at Hays Barton United Methodist Church in Raleigh, N.C. In addition to two music degrees, he has done graduate work in business, communication and public policy